


The Cold Heaven

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [246]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alliances, An important development in Maedhros' healing, Convalescence, Family Dynamics, Gen, Mithrim, Relative peace but a lot of angst, Title shared with a poem by Yeats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: "...as though ice burned and was but the more ice." - YeatsFingolfin takes on new responsibilities inside Mithrim, and at Maedhros' bedside.
Relationships: Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Fingon | Findekáno, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Finrod Felagund | Findaráto, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Original Characters, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Sons of Fëanor, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fëanor | Curufinwë & Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë, Maedhros | Maitimo & Sons of Fëanor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [246]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 15
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for keeping up with this ever-expanding series! We are working on a better organization system...the sub-series are just one feature, you needn't look at them at all if you don't want to, but if you want all of Angband in one place, or whatever, check it out.  
> Also keep an eye on the chapter fics, as some have been recently completed! I posted the final chapter of "all the great voyagers return" this past week.

For the first time in many months, Fingolfin dines at a proper table. The meal is plain but hearty; the tin cup and tin platter might be from his own camp kit. Yet, he has often observed the prosaic before the profound. It is true that, a few hours ago, he was bargaining for more than one life’s hope and happiness; he is presently most conscious of the dishes being set on the board before him, rather than balanced on his knees.

 _Simple_. For all his years of business, his years of study, his clever and strong-willed children—he is a simple man.

If Feanor still lived, he would call Fingolfin a fool.

A strange, choking sensation rises in his lungs and throat. He forgets it at once, by force of thought. He thinks on how this long, sturdy table was made. _Turgon is clever with woodworking_ , he says to himself. _He will be a skillful addition to the fort’s workers. When need arises, Turgon can prove himself as much as Fingon will._

When the meal is finished, Fingolfin shakes hands with a few of Mithrim’s more prominent representatives. He meets for the first time a flat-faced man named Homer, who traveled with Feanor from Colorado territory, and is almost startled to find that there is no animosity in the man’s gaze.

“Brother, eh?” asks Homer, shrugging. “He never spoke of you.”

Maglor, who has done little more than pick at his food, does not contradict this statement. He pushes his plate away as soon as Fingolfin is turning to leave the mess-hall, and follows him out into the corridor.

“Where are you going now?” Maglor asks.

This nephew’s voice was always richer than one might expect, considering his waxy complexion and delicate features. Of course, anyone who spent more than ten minutes in Feanor’s company heard tell of his sons’ prodigious talents. Maglor’s voice and instrumental genius featured prominently in such accounts.

But that voice is thinner, now.

“I am going to relieve Celegorm and Fingon,” Fingolfin answers. “They should eat, and sleep if they can, even for a little while. Have you slept?”

“No, no,” Maglor says. “I am leader here, you know. It is a great responsibility.”

Fingolfin checks the offer on his tongue. He intended to ask, _would you like to sit with him, too_ , but there is a peculiar wideness to Maglor’s eyes, a glassiness suggesting that panic is near. Nearer, perhaps, than it was in his moments of courage that morning, when he came to make a truce neither Feanor nor Maedhros nor even dead Finwe had ever wholly managed.

FIngolfin checks, also, the impulse to tell Maglor that he thinks him brave.

“I will not detain you, then,” he says, instead. “But I do hope you will try to sleep tonight, Maglor, for rest does even leaders good. I wondered—would you permit my company to lay their bedrolls in the dining hall? We do not wish to impose on the division of quarters here.”

“Oh, yes,” Maglor agrees, waving a hand. His hands are smaller than Maedhros’, but they look like Feanor’s did. A craftsman’s hands, of course, whether they wield their power over song or smithy. “Wherever you like. That is, I mean—the hall will do. For you.”

He turns on his heel and hurries away before Fingolfin can say another word, his steps striking shadowed stone in between the arcs of hanging lantern light.

A roof and four walls; rest and security attainable within it. Fingolfin was promised that, once, for himself and his own.

No one, not even Feanor’s sons, knows yet how little of the supplies, trundled over the bridge after Maedhros’ litter, traveled with Fingolfin and his company from New York. They burned their furniture for fuel. They wore their clothes to rags. What could not be burned was often too heavy for frostbitten limbs to bear, and thus was left behind, claimed by earth or weather or luckier men.

Before he seeks the room which Maglor avoids, Fingolfin remembers that he has something surviving in his pack, which he means to carry with him now.

A man must choose his weapon, at times like this. Fingolfin’s weapon, when he raps lightly on the closed door of Maedhros’ sickroom, is a French Bible. It is twisted and frilled like a lichen-crested husk of bark. The snow and the cold warped and ruined it, but he will have it with him in his grave.

(It was Anaire’s wedding gift to him.)

Fingon’s voice bids him enter. When he does, there is little change to the scene before him—Celegorm beside the door, slumped like a battle-weary soldier but for the stiff set of his shoulders; Huan a disreputable hound-skin rug between his master and the bedframe; Maedhros still as death.

“Father,” says Fingon. “Is it—that time already?”

Fingon, at least, is sitting on the chair that Estrela abandoned; Fingolfin is glad not to see him crouched uncomfortably on the cold floor. There is a basin of soapy grey water beside him. Fingolfin notices that Maedhros’ hair is damp on the pillow. Fingon must have washed it.

“Yes,” he says. “If you will allow me, I will keep watch for a little while.”

He expects Celegorm to protest in one breath with Fingon, but both boys (both men) surprise him. Fingon rises from his chair, and Celegorm scrambles to his feet.

Celegorm asks, “You will tell me the instant he wakes?”

_If he wakes._

Fingolfin nods gravely. “I will.”

Celegorm’s eyes drop to the book under his uncle’s arm, and he sneers—or maybe smiles. It is difficult to separate the two, with him; it has been so since he was small, a curly-headed child with indignant grey-green eyes and an obstinate chin.

“Stay,” Celegorm says to Huan, with a snapped finger and a click of his tongue, and Huan, who had drawn himself up on his hairy forelegs, flops down again.

Celegorm stumps out of the room.

Fingon, as he passes his father, throws an arm around his shoulders, drawing up against him with the sort of fierce affection that is a painful, secret remnant of Anaire. She, too, waited until they were alone to show him love like this.

“Father,” Fingon says, half-against his neck, “You will come first to me? You will not make me wait, this time?”

Fingolfin rests his free hand against the thick, dark hair—so like his own in color, but longer and wilder than his has ever been. Does Fingon sense the unspoken betrayal of the night before?

“This time?” he asks, hesitantly.

“He stirred…you said he stirred.”

“Ah.” Fingolfin shuts his eyes. Then, more quietly, he vows: “I will call you at once. Go and eat now. I will watch him as I watched all—all four of you, since the time you were in cradles.”

Fingon laughs at that, a faintly tearful sound, and follows his fair-headed cousin.

Fingolfin reminds himself to be grateful that the two did not come to blows.

Fingon closed the door behind him. Alone in stone-muffled quiet but for the sighing hound, Fingolfin takes the chair beside the bed.

With his hair darkened by water, and the bruises fading on his cheeks and chin, Maedhros bears more than a passing resemblance to his father. Feanor’s nose was not crested by an angry gash, but Feanor’s skin stretched over eager bones.

Fingolfin has always known that his eldest nephew’s features were not blunted by Scottish influence. Though Nerdanel is a comely woman in her own way, Maedhros has the dazzling cut-glass face of the Irish fae.

 _Miriel_ , Fingolfin recalls, haunted. He has seen portraits of her in his father’s house.

They must have starved him in Angband. Of course they did—they beat him, branded him. They carved _whore_ across his youthful hips, belting him in pain and shame until the end of his days. It is a wound of a memory, bringing to mind the boy in fine linen and silk, whom Fingolfin admonished and threatened as if lives depended on the boy’s good character.

 _He was lost, then_ , he thinks, his lips pressed firmly together as they are in the attitude of his prayers. Then, with another guilty look at the places that a muscled body, an unbent leg, a _hand_ should fill—

_He is lost, now._

Fingolfin rests the Bible against his knee, lifts his wire-rimmed spectacles from the flat, hard pocket-case that preserved them these many miles, and begins to read.

_Mon esprit est abattu au dedans de moi, Mon coeur est troublé dans mon sein._

_…my spirit is in anguish within me: my heart within me is troubled._

He shall be here a long while. Not only in this room, but in the stronghold he was never intended to reach. The men and women of Mithrim are reasonably suspicious, but they do not seem to dislike Fingolfin or his company. To be kin of Feanor’s, as confirmed by Maglor when first they arrived, seems to be enough. No doubt the additional foodstock helped.

In his own mind, Fingolfin allows himself one bitter question: have Mithrim’s people wearied of Feanorians?

With Feanor gone, they might have.

With Maedhros gone—

_Je me souviens des jours d’autrefois, Je médite sur toutes tes oeuvres, Je réfléchis sur l’ouvrage de tes mains._

_I remembered the days of old, I meditated on all thy works: I meditated upon the works of thy hands._

He had so many slights to hurl. He has never been one to offer strident insult; to stoke the flames of conflict. When last he did, of course, Feanor was so furious that he made war with one of Fingolfin’s own weapons.

But this time, there would be no retrenchment. Fingolfin would be strengthened to his core by that anger that has its roots buried in both grief and betrayal.

Feanor had not had the mad fortitude to push through to violence _then_. Fingolfin was no longer afraid. Fingolfin would be the one to raise the gun, if one was to be raised—

But this was before. Before he heard Maglor and Celegorm’s jumbled explanation.

Before death and Feanor, linked as few things in Feanor’s life ever were, had silenced every bold, angry thought.

Fingolfin could only recall them, now, as if they were the passions and schemes of another man. They had no sound; no dimension.

_J’étends mes mains vers toi; Mon âme soupire après toi, comme une terre desséchée_

_I stretched forth my hands to thee: my soul is as earth without water unto thee._

_Anaire…_ He shuts the Bible gently. His fingers trace its worn, uneven surfaces with the tenderness he can never again show to his wife.

The color of the light has changed. The sun has gone down—went down hours ago, of course, for it is now coming on December and the darkest days draw near.

There is a single oil lamp on the plain bedside table, tingeing the ravaged repose of Maedhros’ features, but leaving much of the rest of the room in shadow. Reading would be difficult, now.

Scripture settles into the umber shadows. _Though I walk through the valley of darkness…here I am, here I am…_

The only warmth—for there is no fireplace in Mithrim, save the one in the kitchen and that in the great dining hall—comes from a disreputable little brazier, propped haphazardly on a few bricks, to serve an invalid’s needs. Yet, this is almost luxury compared to the lakeside tents, the bed of hard earth. And it is incomparable when one considers, as Fingolfin must, the horrors that aged a young man decades in a mere six months.

In New York, Fingolfin did not know much of Morgoth Bauglir, except as an object of Feanor’s particular disdain and a cause for some cautious consternation on Finwe’s part. Fingolfin was not important enough to have dealings with the governor or his brother, generally, and the pall over the latter’s steel operation, coming to an unavoidable head in the early ‘40s, had made an acquaintance nigh-impossible and deeply undesirable.

Still, he had no cause to believe that Bauglir was any more remarkable than the other corrupt businessmen who found failure in their schemes, or (with greater luck) sanctioned their own success in Washington.

One could think a man a scoundrel and a criminal, and never expect him to torture another man half to death.

 _Whore—Feanorian—_ the countless brands—

FIngolfin sets his Bible carefully on the floor beneath his chair, and rises to pace about the room. His fingers are cold (always cold, now), and his head is beginning to ache with the day’s fatigues. There is so much to be done here, for his family and their unfriendly world. Who shall be his allies, in a land where Feanor made so many enemies?

What matters Feanor’s conduct, when the enemies are foul enough to have made all of Maedhros’ body their crime?

 _If you can hear me, my love_ , he prays, to Anaire-under-snow, _give me sight. I would see all that I must accomplish, tomorrow, and the day after. More than that, my love. As many more days as I shall live._

Live must be half-lived, now. It cannot be joined to its old selves, for they are all outlaws, whether they chose that path or not. They are all made enemies of certain classes and certain histories, whether they waged war or lived in ignorant peace.

He passes close to Huan, and the hound’s head lifts. Their gazes meet for a moment. Fingolfin observes a surprising eloquence in the dog’s dark-welled eyes.

“It is a good sign, is it not?” FIngolfin asks in a voice scarce above a whisper. “That your master left you here, to guard with me.”

He pokes at the dying coals in the brazier and adds a little wood from the heap that Gwindor or some other helper left beside it. There is an empty bowl on the windowsill; they must have given Maedhros broth, judging by the faint, savory scent remaining. Broth, though he did not wake. Fingolfin has spooned restorative liquids through Anaire’s half-conscious lips often enough to know that it can be done even when there is little strength, little understanding.

He peers out the window: ink-darkness. Night is the same color, seen through a window, as it is in any land.

“Uncle,” says a voice from the bed.

 _Maedhros’ voice._ He cannot even pretend to be surprised by its altered sound; he alone has heard it, since Fingon’s return. Fingolfin is only surprised, then, by how quickly the tears flood his eyes. How fitfully his face works and twitches, before he stills it and turns to see another truth, another turning.

(He must.)

There is no fever brightness in his nephew’s eyes. Maedhros regards him almost peacefully, the lines of his features little changed from when unnatural sleep lay over him.

 _Uncle_. Not—not _Athair_ , as he had said in half a dream. Fingolfin ought not be disappointed by this; indeed he _is_ not. He is only sick at heart, watching pain and knowledge warring with that thin-drawn peace on Maedhros’ face.

“Maedhros,” he says. “You are awake, then. It is good to see you, I—” Already, he is saying too much. He returns to the chair, wincing at each awkward step.

Maedhros’ eyes follow him, but that is all. His hair is fanned against the pillow as it was when Fingolfin entered; his hand and his wrist, spread on the coverlet in mocking parallel, remain motionless.

“You,” Maedhros whispers. “You crossed the river?”

For a mad instant, Fingolfin thinks he means the moat around Mithrim. But how would he know of that? How would he—

Then he remembers. _Fool_ that he is, he remembers.

“Yes.” The chair creaks under him. His foot, tipped back as he leans forward, nudges the edge of the Bible. “That was many months ago, in truth. Do not trouble yourself about it, now.”

He has sat at this bedside twice in secret parlay. Why did he learn nothing from their first meeting—when he was Feanor and Athair, god and king?

 _You are only tongue-tied Fingolfin, now_.

Maedhros swallows. It is visible in the frail translucence of his pale throat. “You are here,” he says. “It is now.”

Fingolfin would touch him, if he thought it would do any good. But to lay a hand on him—can it be more than cruelty? Can it, ever again?

He needs Fingon. Indeed, he promised that he would go for Fingon at once, when Maedhros woke. But his errand is forestalled by a need he was too blockheaded to foresee: he must explain to Maedhros that he is leaving him alone. That Fingon is here too, here and now.

(That Maedhros is missing a hand.)

“Is there anything I can give you?” he asks first. Gentle and slow, very slow, as a man tests ice before crossing it above deep waters.

Maedhros does not shake his head. He says, with equal quiet, “No.”

No movement, still, save that of his eyes. They look down, down, the lids drooping, the lashes pitching and flitting with the exertion of even that effort.

He _has_ seen it; he must have seen it.

But it is agony, to await his notice. It is something more like shock, to realize that that notice shall reveal not the slightest variance of his composed expression.

“Maedhros,” Fingolfin remarks, when he can bear it no longer. “Fingon was here but an hour ago.”

“Fingon?” It is half an interruption. There is some hope, some trace of a mood in that, if not in the eyes, still downcast. The wrist, still poised as if there is a hand clasped on the blanket below it.

“Yes. He has been caring for you as only he can. I promised I would fetch him, if you should wake. Is that—will you permit me?”

The cracked lips form a word and do not speak it. Maedhros, without looking at his uncle, and, if his uncle’s prayers are answered, not looking at _anything_ , says at last,

“Yes. Fetch Fingon. You did promise.”

“Huan is here,” Fingolfin offers, stung by a father’s yearning to reach for the cradle, to gather a bundle of shivering limbs into his arms and hold and rock and comfort, no matter the ill or cause—“Huan will stay with you. Won’t you, old boy?”

And at the sound of his name, Huan picks himself up and lumbers over, to stand tall and swaybacked on the other side of the bed.

Maedhros turns his head, at this. A slight cant, so that his hair spills against his cheek. “Huan,” he says, and then a breath quakes through him, a gust of a rising storm. “Huan—am I— _Celegorm_ —”

“Yes, your brothers are here.” Fingolfin stands, to keep his promise, but he lingers to give a last, and necessary reply. “We are in Mithrim, Maedhros. Fingon brought you home.”

He receives no other answer. Maedhros’ hair conceals him; that, at least, is an old trick of his. Huan noses against the blanket. How a dog can know when and when not to touch, Fingolfin has not the faintest understanding.

“I shall bring him to you in but a moment,” he murmurs, and exits the room as an actor would a stage, as an artist would turn from a painted scene. It seemed as false and as pointedly beautiful as either of these things.

Fingon has eaten (or at least, has half a biscuit crumbling in his hand), and is loitering at the edge of the dining hall. Wachiwi is with him.

Fingon is so strong, so upright. So capable of forthright action and noble decision, even when life has wrung his heart.

Fingolfin has another moment of violent feeling, mercifully concealed by the low-lit corridor. He recovers himself and comes to join the party of two.

“Father?”

Fingolfin cannot lie by delaying another moment; by waiting for Wachiwi to be gone. “Yes,” Fingolfin says, “He is awake.”


	2. Chapter 2

Fingolfin sleeps better than he should.

How difficult it is, to follow his own advice. He would have counseled Fingon to sleep; he would have counseled _Maedhros_ to sleep, and indeed, only let down his own guard when his nephew’s eyes began to flag. He would have counseled Gwindor, also, knowing that he had no authority over the man.

Instead, it was age and weariness that singled him out. The hours drifted like snow. The night was a heavy one. Fingolfin lifted his head, and it was the last watch of blackness before the first shred of dawn. Fingolfin heaved in a breath, and it was winter morning.

The morning, some time after that, is made up of cool light, the bittersweet scent of herbal tea, the sound of Caranthir’s murmured prayers.

Fingolfin had forgotten about Caranthir. He was wrong to do so.

(He forgets, too, about himself.)

Caranthir came after the day’s first ministrations had been accomplished. Fingon had given Gwindor a mortar and pestle, because Gwindor needed something to do. Fingon had examined the stump. Maedhros had not looked at him or at his own flesh, while Fingon did it.

Fingolfin felt the silence hanging all around, before Caranthir entered, and as such, he is grateful for the prayers. The shape of words, the shape of deliverance; these allow him to think.

(He is not expecting deliverance.)

Reflecting on his brother’s children, he is compelled to face a loss coequal to Argon’s. Amrod, one half of Feanor’s youngest sons. It is not possible to ask further questions without further bloodshed. Amrod is dead; Aredhel heard as much from Celegorm.

Celegorm is not a liar. At least, not in that way—

 _We are all liars_ , Fingolfin thinks. He himself has never been particularly skilled at deception, but that does not mean, he supposes, that he does not _try_.

Celegorm has not returned. He left his dog. His dog left after him. Gwindor came back from the stables, and Fingolfin settled in for a vigil, and Maedhros said, to Fingolfin alone,

“You can keep to your bed, sir.”

“I have no bed, yet. This chair will do,” Fingolfin answered.

Maedhros scarcely blinked out of those long, tired eyes. He did not argue.

Fingolfin will have to ask Fingon and Gwindor whether Maedhros slept.

FIngolfin will have to ask Maedhros what he remembers.

No—no. To do so would be torture. Fingolfin must learn of Maedhros’ knowledge—a certain kind of knowledge, that is—from someone else.

When Caranthir departs, with an errand he has whispered to his brother, Fingolfin marks his chance.

He rises, the chair-legs announcing the movement ungracefully. He thinks he sees Maedhros flinch, but he resists the urge to turn, to study. Fingolfin does not believe in coddling, but not from a lack of sympathy. Coddling is the product of fearful self-love; it cannot do its object any good. Fingolfin, if he is to do good, must be gentle; he must be restrained. He _must not be_ fascinated.

All these are kindnesses; their union, the kindest way he knows.

The kindest way—

— _they let him live for sport, they wanted him to suffer, they are men, somehow, but in a way only Fingolfin’s deepest heartbreak can begin to comprehend_ —

A hollow of silence, beyond the fastened door. Fingolfin followed Caranthir out into the hall. He closed the door behind him. Without looking, he knows that Fingon and Maedhros watched as he did. Doubtless they have guessed a purpose close to his purpose; who could not? He wishes to have a conversation that Maedhros cannot hear.

“Caranthir.”

“Yes?” There is no _sir_ spoken after that, but the title almost seems to hang in the air. Would it have done the same, for Feanor? The distrust in Caranthir’s eyes reminds Fingolfin not of his dead brother (his half life), but of Nerdanel.

Nerdanel, when she was widowed the first time, in a way.

She had spurned him. It had not been pride. It had not— _only_ —been pride.

Fingolfin clears his throat.

“May I speak with you?”

He is about to be cruel: not without sympathy.

“What is it?” Caranthir demands, impatiently. But this time, he adds: “Sir.”

“I am sorry to put this burden on you,” FIngolfin begins. “It is—I must speak to you of Amrod.”

Grief is one of the last realms of honesty, in Fingolfin’s experience. He thinks of his old Saturdays, the newspapers and the clock and Anaire’s understanding of his semi-scholarly whim. Of course, his routines and reckonings had been futile. He had been making something of himself in a world that had already fashioned a place for him. He lied to himself about that place, all the same, as long as he could. He lied for the clock, and counted the hours well-spent.

In that lie, dodging the edges of grief, he was afraid. He feared his brother’s sons. Maedhros first, and then the rest. He was too much of a coward or a brother or both, to release them from his notice and apprehension. If not Maedhros, Maglor. If not Maglor, Celegorm. He clung to the belief that they would care enough to hurt him. Hurt his family.

Instead, Feanor’s sons made Fingolfin’s children their friends.

Still: the bridge burned. Love ran in veins, perhaps. Words of caution, of debate, stood silent in uncertain mouths.

Or maybe love and words, bond and betrayal, the last chance for living, hung in the air like smoke, that day.

(He shouldn’t be thinking of this, now.)

“I heard you tell him a little of the fort,” Fingolfin says. “Only a little.” And it is true; he was careful not to eavesdrop. When Caranthir spoke, he prayed. While Caranthir prayed, he busied himself with Fingon’s requests.

“Yes.” Grief. Honesty. The makings of a bridge.

“I think it would be helpful for him to hear how many of us have come. He should not be left in the dark”—a poor choice of words, too late now—“But nor would I hurt him more than necessary. Caranthir, God forgive me, but I must ask: Amrod is gone. Does Maedhros know it?”

There is a question written boldly on Fingon’s face when Fingolfin returns, but for once, his son holds his tongue. Fingolfin has not often expected patience from Fingon. Rather, he has admired (or envied) his forthright nature. No reticence in Fingon, bless him.

No reticence in the son who saved Feanor’s son.

There are four walls to this room. So it is with most rooms; with all proper rooms.

There are also four men within. Three brothers and a father who does not understand how to love them?

No—not everything is _that_.

It is mid-morning, judging by the light through the window. Fingolfin retakes his seat. There were sounds of breakfasting, out in the corridor, coming from the hall beyond. In answer, his own stomach roiled with hunger, but his throat was (and remains) pinched almost shut. Swallowing is difficult.

 _Of course,_ Caranthir said, with Feanor’s disapproval on Nerdanel’s face, _You didn’t know._

“Maedhros,” Fingolfin begins, feeling every eye upon him.

Fingon and Gwindor react to the name with an almost identical stiffening of their shoulders. Though his presence here is not barred by any means, Fingolfin was not on the mountain. He does not know what words and names passed there. Here, inside the sturdy fort-walls, four walls, he is coming to understand what a concession Fingon made by revealing his handiwork—the grievous and necessary hurt.

Maybe it is not patience, that keeps his son silent. Maybe it is everything else.

(Fingolfin does not know how to amputate an extremity. Does not know when it is even time to do so.)

By calling Maedhros by his name, by moving forward, Fingolfin hides his own secret. He alone was there for the first waking, but that, in turn, was only the first waking after the last fall. Something (his father-self, perhaps) tells him that Maedhros spoke to Fingon, _there._

(Each day since Anaire’s death, Fingolfin remembers that he could have gone mad. He chose everything else. He has to step through his sleep and his waking, daily driving that madness away.)

It is quiet, in the four-walled room.

( _Maedhros_.)

Fingolfin would not have asked Fingon for Maedhros’ blood. He swore never to ask for blood or hope from Fingon again, yet Fingon gives him all this, and patience, anyway.

Having called Maedhros’ name, having opened a new wound of conversation before lost Caranthir’s can even begin to heal, he watches now as Maedhros turns his head. Maedhros does it so slowly, so very slowly, that the barest twitch is rendered heavy with meaning.

Caranthir looked like Nerdanel: attended, as she always was, by Feanor’s ghost. Maedhros looks like a corpse with Nerdanel’s hair and Feanor’s sleep-starved eyes. The meaning of it all, of Caranthir and Maedhros, _must_ be pain. Pain, because Feanor was not dead _then_ , and Maedhros is not dead _now_. Pain was the whole of whatever world Maedhros lived and died in. It inhabits, therefore, whatever world in which Fingon has found life for him again.

_Everything. Everything else._

Fingolfin clasps his hands on his knees. His nephew’s attentive glance, so hard-won, is his.

“I owe you an account,” Fingolfin says, in a quiet, private voice that is something of a fiction itself. Fingon and Gwindor can hear him, too. This is not the mountain. “Of our company. You should know who is here with you, beyond the men and women you left with your family in Mithrim.”

_Maedhros—it all happened after Amrod. It all happened because of Amrod. Maedhros…knows._

(Caranthir again.)

“Yes, I know my brothers,” Maedhros says, flat-voiced and flat-eyed. “Yes, they are here.”

 _Because of Amrod?_ Fingolfin asked.

Caranthir’s face screwed up in one instant; slackened the next. His rosary beads were still crushed in his fist. Fingolfin wanted to pray himself. He had done so in the night; he would do so again before evening. He would give praise, where he could give little else.

( _Everything._ )

Caranthir said, _Maedhros tried to save him. I don’t care what you think of the rest of us. Maedhros tried._

“Yes,” Fingolfin agrees, at present. When Maedhros stirred yesterday afternoon, Fingolfin told him first of Fingon, then of Huan, then of Celegorm. _Your brothers are here_. He hurt Caranthir to quell the chance of a graver hurt: false hope. But Caranthir, in turn, said that Maedhros knew.

The Feanorians look after each other; their knowledge is shared in mysterious ways, and leaves no room for outsiders. Fingolfin continues, withdrawing the reach of his words to fit only his own people: “You know that Fingon is here, of course. Turgon and Aredhel are, too.”

That is all. Everyone. _Everyone._ He is obliged to clear his throat again; an ugly cough. He thought he was ready to describe his family like that, but when the words were spoken, his whole mind and heart longed to utter Argon’s name.

In the end, he does not. Anaire, who is just as dead as their last child, must have placed her spirit hand on his lips to trap the name behind them. Delivered by the memory of her love from another bout of madness, Fingolfin finishes, quite calmly, “Finrod and Galadriel—Artanis—traveled with us from New York. Finrod is eager to see you.”

That is not a lie, even though Finrod might call it one.

Silence.

Maedhros’ left hand rises and falls. The wrist crooks; the fingers flex. His raw mouth folds into a thin line.

 _You know_ , Fingolfin thinks, for his nephew is no fool, and the absence of wife and son are not—can never be—accidental omissions. Feanor cut Nerdanel out of his life by force. Fingolfin saw the savaged remains.

_You know, Maedhros. And yet, you tried._

Fingolfin rallies. He even smiles. “As for the others, Gwindor, I am sure, has told you that your friend—Estrela, and the two children—”

“Belle goes by Estrela now,” Gwindor says, crowding the conversation. Changing it with knowledge beyond Fingolfin’s reach. “Aye. You’ll see them soon enough, Russandol. They’re still sleeping. As you should be.”

Just so, Fingolfin’s task, painstakingly arranged, is quickly completed. But for the spasm in his hand and the turn of his head, Maedhros scarcely reacted to the account. He seemed most arrested by the mention of Estrela’s new name—and that was little more than a flicker.

“Sleep,” Fingon says, speaking for his father. “Yes, please. Father, perhaps you can reason with him. He doesn’t want the draught.”

_Reason with him._

_Order him._

Maedhros—changes. Fingolfin recoils, recognizing that they both of them heard the command in Fingon’s voice. Then Maedhros recovers himself, resuming that ravished, prayer-card repose. A martyr.

What does Fingon see?

Fingolfin says, quietly, “Never mind that, Fingon. He is resting just as he is.” They both should rest—they _all_ should rest—but Fingolfin is trapped in his own understanding of keeping peace. He remembers well the guilt of his childhood, trying to understand martyrs. Lives that led to violent death.

And as for lives that continue after?

_Rest. He is resting just as he is._

Fingon turns away; appeased or embarrassed, it is difficult to determine. Gwindor says something to him; Fingolfin does not hear it. Maedhros’ dull eyes offer nothing further.

 _Argon?_ Fingolfin imagined Maedhros asking. _Like Amrod…_

But that is another feint of selfishness. Why does he want to match their pain to the wrung-out body and soul before him?

“No infection,” Fingon is saying, to Gwindor. Maedhros shuts his eyes.

Then the door slams open, dispelling the quiet. Fingon wheels, Gwindor with him. Fingolfin is, perhaps, made useful again.

“Hullo, Maitimo,” says Celegorm. His wild hair is bound back from his face; the gun at his hip is a sinister shape, less out of place in this makeshift sickroom than might be expected. This nephew, more than ever, always appears to have just come from a fight, or ready for one. “I came for Huan.”

He speaks only to his brother, but his eyes slide over the room, a gaze unsheathed.

“Huan left last night,” Fingon says. “We thought he went after you.”

“He stayed a little while,” Maedhros says—or placates. Whenever he speaks, he is lying and placating and _pleasing_ , despite his reticence to sleep or to be healed. _That_ wretched tangle of truths is the primer on his tombstone features.

(Fingolfin remembers bodies in snow.)

“Blast,” Celegorm mutters, at no one in particular. Then he sinks down on the floor, thrusting his legs out in front of him; a familiar attitude, and one that brooks no argument.

Fingon _wants_ to argue. It is in the line of his mouth. He doesn’t.

Armed with that one final respite, Fingolfin decides to make his truce. He smiles at Maedhros, without catching his eye. He rises. Anaire’s Bible is here, but, like Caranthir, he must consider what other items may be procured for Maedhros’ comfort.

And at present, it may offer comfort to depart. To diminish.

“If you will forgive me,” he says, “I ought to seek out my other children. Breakfast, too, if it is to be had—and breakfast for _you_ , Fingon, since I doubt you have gone for it yourself.”

Fingon deflects this fatherly interest. “I wasn’t hungry.”

“A doctor should eat.” And a patient should sleep, but Fingolfin chooses battlegrounds carefully, when he can.

“If you see Belle—Estrela,” says Gwindor, whose very act of speaking seems to elicit an especially daggered glance from Celegorm, “Tell her I shall speak with her shortly.”

Fingolfin nods. He is at the door when another voice turns him round.

“You’ll come back?”

There was something—something _there_ , just for a moment. Maedhros’ voice crawling towards its old self.

A tender thought, until Fingolfin acknowledges the _self_ it was. Perhaps Fingolfin knew him best when he was begging.

Celegorm, like stone standing, and Gwindor, like stone sliding. Fingon, made glad by the appearance of a bond between his father and his cousin.

These moments matter.

Maedhros, however deep he is in pain and lies and his own mind, must know that too. Yet: he asked.

“Within the hour,” Fingolfin promises—and promises himself that, upon his return, he shall find out _why_.


	3. Chapter 3

Finrod, Gwindor, Estrela, the children—Maedhros has had many visitors today, and that is not even counting his brothers, who have appeared and disappeared with the restive uncertainty of ghosts. Caranthir does not like to share the room with many people, and so he has been mostly absent since the morning, save for a few furtive appearances during which he asked both Maedhros and Fingon if there was anything he could do.

Celegorm seems to feel the same dislike for crowding, but overweening obstinacy has kept him hanging about. Maglor has made no entrance today, nor has Curufin. Knowing what he knows of Amrod, Fingolfin passes no judgment on young Amras.

Indeed, he does his best to be patient with all of them, even with Celegorm, who is gruff and rude and endlessly watchful. Fingolfin has also wondered, when no one is demanding his speech or expression, if it would be better or worse to have Curufin in Celegorm’s place. Curufin looks terribly like Feanor, _is_ terribly like Feanor. The craftsman distrust of ordinary men crackling through humor and grief alike—that is Curufin.

Perhaps Fingolfin only wants Feanor because Feanor had such power to control him, to make Fingolfin (and his world) small, manageable. That is a conceit of an older time; a time before bridges, before bullets. Still, is it any wonder that, surrounded by the task of fathering Feanor’s children, that he wants the crushing curse of Feanor’s weight?

Fingolfin’s patience with his brother, such as it could be called patience, lasted long and sickly. Outside of that fire-shadow, he is more inclined to brusqueness, to sparking anger of his own. Such things are unhelpful, here.

(Is that it? Is he afraid that he will snap at Celegorm? Does the lad’s bluntness set him at dangerous ease?)

It is of no import, now. He is taking his night-shift, alone with his nephew’s paper-white face and seeking eyes.

 _You should sleep_ , Fingon and Turgon and Aredhel say. They look like him when they say that, because he can recognize his own frown on younger features, but they sound like Anaire. _Rest. Dream. Put aside the cares of the day._

He draws himself up and out of his recollections, his sorry childhood, and considers Maedhros.

_What of the cares of the night?_

Maedhros has his hand pressed against his sternum: a change. Perhaps he laid it there, forgetting his own self-imposed need for stillness, and now is remembering, constantly remembering, that he must not take it away while anyone watches.

All of this is, of course, Fingolfin’s blind conjecture. He cannot see beyond the dark corners of the room. Fingon left the lamp burning, but it casts only a small glow.

“Maedhros.”

No answer but a low, brief hum. Fingolfin steels himself. Sighs. Thinks of the plain, satisfying meal he briefly took with comrades, new and old.

Maedhros still cannot eat. Skin and bone, he is, and broth is all they can give him.

“A long day,” Fingolfin says, beginning in the middle. “A long, first day. I—I expect that every guess, every rumination, pains you, but still, I hope you will forgive my taking this opportunity to speak openly.”

“You sent Fingon away,” Maedhros murmurs.

“I—” Fingon had been surprisingly willing to go, shamefacedly admitting that he needed sleep. His eyes were half-shut when he spoke: that might have contributed to the willingness. Maybe, too, the security of Gwindor and Estrela and the children, weaving a net of simple comfort around their friend, had been enough to convince Fingon that some moments were just that…moments, in which nothing would happen but time. “Yes. You know how he can be, but his body forced respite on him.”

“He slept a little, before.” Maedhros’ head twitches, spreading a fragile web of hair against the pillow. The pillows at Mithrim are stuffed with old rags, not down. They have no livestock, beyond the horses. No birds. No luxuries. “Peacefully. He slept peacefully. I do not think he dreamed.”

This is the offer of a gift. _Your son, the son you love. I did not give him nightmares. No nightmares, when he severed my bones._

“He was not always a deep sleeper,” Fingolfin says fondly, offering something in return. “When he was very small, he was plagued with colic. I thought that—I was very worried.”

“You were very young,” Maedhros says. Maedhros is also very young, but to speak of _that_ would, by necessity, take shape as a horrid jest. 

_Like Feanor_ , Fingolfin thinks instead. _I married young, like Feanor, and so neither of us were old men when our sons were grown. When he died._

“I don’t feel young any longer,” is what he says aloud.

Maedhros nods, the faintest lever of his chin. “But not because of Fingon.”

Fingolfin smiles. “In truth, I owe some grey hairs to him.”

“Because that is love.”

He wishes that his nephew’s voice did not sound like it was bleeding. That, like so many things and some people, cannot be helped. Nevertheless, he wishes.

“Fingon is a great comfort to me, too.” He shouldn’t be speaking of this. He should not be telling Maedhros of the love between fathers and sons.

Here is what Fingolfin knows: Feanor betrayed him, and traveled west. As he vowed, he reached this place called Mithrim, which is no paradise, but which has, to Fingolfin’s mind, a great deal of promise. Feanor did not harbor there in safety. Maybe he could not. Maybe there was no choice. But as Fingolfin has known Feanor and his fire and the wake of that fire, in which the only life he shared with Feanor was spent—

There is always a choice, and it is always Feanor’s.

What does that mean for Amrod, who is dead?

What does that mean for Maedhros?

Maedhros tried to save Amrod. But from what? How did Mairon the hunter enter in, and how did Bauglir come to vent such fury on a son’s body, for a father’s crime?

“You want something,” Maedhros murmurs. “What is it?”

It occurs to Fingolfin that a question like that takes courage, while remaining a hiding place.

(What is it that _Maedhros_ wants?)

“I do not understand this world,” Fingolfin admits. Another show of trust, to concede ignorance. Everything they do, Maedhros and he, will be like or unlike Feanor. Will be defined by him.

He can count the times that his brother embraced him on one hand.

On one hand.

“I left Mithrim in June,” Maedhros says. “It is now…November, Caranthir tells me. I don’t know the world much, either. Why ask me?”

They both know the answer to that already, so Fingolfin does not respond directly. “Turgon has an eye for land and building. I’ve asked him to survey Mithrim, as a stranger, to see that it is as secure as can be. Is this acceptable?”

Maedhros’ eyelids flutter. “Yes.”

“It may offend your brothers.”

“A good deal offends my brothers. You know that.”

“I don’t want to hurt them.”

Maedhros laughs. At least, that is what Fingolfin believes the sound to be—it is, in truth, only a raspier breath than usual, spat from his mouth. “Not quite the same thing.”

“Maedhros…”

“It doesn’t,” Maedhros says, lifting his left hand and tucking it against his side. Fingolfin has not seen his right arm even twitch. “It doesn’t hurt as much as you think, to speak of…all of it. Ask me what you must.”

“I’m not Fingon, you mean.”

The awful, quiet laugh again. “Yes.”

A father, a brother, a leader who did not ask to lead. So much nearer to cruelty than a man in those positions might expect himself to be. Fingolfin chides himself for bandying Fingon’s name like a shining talisman, a blade.

“I have helped him tend your injuries,” he says, lowering his gaze so that Maedhros can hear the words in privacy. “I’ve seen what was done to you. We don’t have to speak of _that_.”

“I should be grateful.” Then: “Thank you.”

It is Fingolfin’s turn to feel his breath scraping in his throat. “Do you believe we will soon be under attack?”

Maedhros pauses before replying. “I do not think an army will come for me. More likely it will be…it will be one man, if any. This man—his interest is his own.”

_The hunter._

“Very well,” Fingolfin says. “We’ll want strong defenses, anyway. As long as we are guests of Mithrim, I assure you, we will defend it as best we can.” To lift the heaviness a little, he continues, “Aredhel is the best shot of all of us.”

“Celegorm will be proud.” He turns his head from side to side. Earlier, in the hall, Gwindor told Fingolfin that Maedhros was in pain.

 _Mad with it_ , Gwindor said, his own face drawn and pale and hurting. _Must be the arm. But what can we do?_

Fingolfin is still deciding.

“Does it help to talk?” he asks, at last, brought back to Anaire. Sometimes, even in her weariness, the distraction of conversation had done her good.

“You shouldn’t worry,” Maedhros replies. A new clench to his jaw—or has it been there all along? “It is…in truth, it is mortifying, to see you worry over me.”

“I do not know what else to do.”

“I broke my word.” It is a whisper. Feanor’s ghost is more than a whisper. Feanor’s ghost fills the quiet room. “I—if I had been arrested, as I ought to have been, I’d have been hanged. I _was_ hanged, in a way, in the end. But before that, I was flogged. Twice, in particular. You’ve seen it all, as you said. The hanging was for the crimes, the crimes against—against outsiders. Crimes under the law. But the floggings were for other wrongs. I haven’t forgotten _those_ wrongs, you see? I haven’t—pretended that they’re past or paltry, merely because…because the punishment was hard.”

Fingolfin fears he will be sick. He mustn’t be; the basin is on the far side of the bed, and is for Maedhros’ use. Far more than that, though, such a display of his heart’s horror would be perplexing, if not outright harmful, to his nephew’s fragile composure.

“I never desired your punishment.”

“I hate,” Maedhros says, in a chilling replication of Fingolfin’s own pleading tone, “To think of what you know of me. Let me have the flogging, with the scars. Let it mean something. Else I shall not be able to endure your kindness. You, Fingon. Finrod, in another day or two. You’re all too kind.”

 _You’re just a child_ , springs to Fingolfin’s tongue, but he does not say it because it is not true.

“I meant it,” Fingolfin manages, after a moment. “Worrying over you, caring for you…I am too clumsy to do aught else.” Helpless. Tears rising in his eyes. But it is dark; surely Maedhros, tired as he is, cannot see well in the dark. “So let it mean nothing, if you must. But I will be quite useless, if I am not—”

 _A father_. He nearly said that, too.

“I did not want.” Four words; no apt conclusion. Too many conclusions could follow.

“This is an evil time.” _My wife and son, my brother and your father, his son and your brother, are dead. And you and I—you and I, Maedhros—_

“You and I, Maedhros, must be united, or I do not believe that Mithrim can stand. But we needn’t be the walls of this stalwart fort quite yet. The stones will hold, tonight.

“You are tired,” murmurs Maedhros, seeming to have deferred to the spirit of the prior speech.

“Yes. But don’t tell Fingon.” He smiles, still unsure of how much Maedhros can see. “And you—it hurts you badly, doesn’t it? Your—recent wound?”

“A little.”

A new tactic occurs to Fingolfin. “If Gwindor was here, would you say the same to him?”

“Yes, and he would scold.” Another weary, faintly violent toss of his head. “Are you going to scold? You used to be rather terrifying at it, when I was…when I was a dandified fool.”

Fingolfin is obliged to wipe his eyes. “I have no intention of scolding. Would you like a little water to drink?”

Silence. Fingolfin takes that for a no. Of course, in Bauglir’s vile stronghold, _no_ must have carried a price. A punishment.

Someday, he will need to hear of that. Of what remade Maedhros’ soul, for that will be an inquiry of equal importance to how they remade his body.

Not tonight.

“Do you think that you can sleep?”

“Not yet.” Not quite a no, but it is a variation on meek acquiescence and the vivid logic of self-loathing. Fingolfin has already imagined this body strung and subdued for a lashing, but he had not…had not considered that the waiting mind would shape pain into judgment.

For what other wounds did Maedhros strike a bargain with his old sins?

Fingolfin drinks a little water himself. Then he settles back in the chair, his bones older and stiffer than they were just a moment ago, before he stirred them and reminded them of what they have lived.

“I wish you had a proper bed,” Maedhros says. “That chair looks ghastly.”

“I cannot sleep yet, either.” Fingolfin reaches into his pocket, touches the rosary beads coiled there. Twilight and midnight are both colored by deep shades that remind him, yes, yes and again, of Anaire. He could not well keep secrets from her; even when he feared that his concerns might burden her overmuch, she drew them from him gently but surely. Today he saw the children have much the same effect on Maedhros. He heard fragments of the ending, the ending that destroyed Gwindor before the rest of them knew to mourn also. He heard whispers of terrible fears, conquered in the moment by knowing reassurance. The children worshiped Maedhros, that much was clear. That much was also to be expected. Two decades as Fingon’s father, but not Fingon’s foremost light, had taught Fingolfin that.

Maedhros also loved the children. Maedhros, this new Maedhros, hatred carved into his body with glee, and neither glee nor hatred in his eyes or ragged mouth, loved the children so much that he wept with them.

Fingolfin reflects on this, the silence spreading softly between them, and ponders how easy it would be to bring the two small creatures in each day, to let them tug at the slack puppet strings of Maedhros’ spirit, eliciting more in an hour than Fingolfin’s careful prodding could in a day, or likely, many days.

The lamp still burns, but Maedhros’ shadowed eyes are like lights that have been blown out. Fingolfin concludes that he cannot use the children to steal the truths he wants.

“You look like him,” Maedhros says.

Fingolfin’s mouth dries to desert sand. Is this the moment in which Maedhros recalls what Fingolfin has not been able to forget? It would be fitting—they are again alone, at night.

He has only the presence of mind to ask, “Him?”

“Grandfather.”

He was not expecting that. The lure and power of Feanor, relegated to sudden irrelevance, is like a gleam fading, a sun finally set. Fingolfin _should_ think of his father more than his brother, truth be told.

His father, after all, loved him.

“I hope to be half the man he was.”

“You’re not very _like_ him,” Maedhros counters, and there, wheeling back, is Feanor again—in the way that the words sting. “In manner, I mean. But you look more like him—most like him, I think.”

 _Of all his sons_ , goes unsaid.

“The world was a better place while he lived,” Fingolfin remarks.

“Yes.” Then, hesitantly, “He killed Grandfather, you know. I—I believed it, but we never had concrete proof until we left New York.”

Why is this the part of the story that is easiest to tell?

“I myself am readily convinced of it,” Fingolfin says, encouragingly. “I am no longer a skeptic, with regard to…” He doesn’t want to utter the name, since Maedhros didn’t.

“There is a gift.” This takes effort. Choosing the words so that their bladed edges turn away from him. Fingolfin has never known how to speak like that. “A…a gift to Grandfather. Unmistakable. And it was…it was there. He has it.”

“Ah.”

“It isn’t enough,” Maedhros says, and though there is urgency in the words his voice drops lower; water pouring from a cliff. Gravity, fate, exhaustion. “He wants more. More than…Grandfather is dead. Dead and buried back ho—in the east. So, you see. It isn’t a future. He’ll want Mithrim, if only to ruin it, and he wants…” 

“Why,” Fingolfin dares to ask, “Did he want you?”

Maedhros looks at him for a long time before he answers. “I don’t know,” he says, finally. “He told me, but I still don’t know.”

_Thief. Slave._

_Whore._

_Feanorian._

Darkness, deep and all-consuming, in the well of possible truths. Fingolfin must swallow the shame of having asked such a question.

“Never mind that,” he murmurs. “It will not aid you in the least, to think of what is dreadful.”

“You don’t understand,” Maedhros says slowly. Slowly, as if he is speaking to a child, but not a child he loves. “He is with me, always. I can almost see him standing there, in the corner of the room. He watches. It gives him pleasure. And here you are, so—so like Grandfather, and this time, it will be his bullet as well as his design. I’ve seen your head blasted to skull and brain a dozen times this evening. Madness or memory? But I wasn’t _there_.”

“It may be fever again,” Fingolfin suggests, though he himself is snow-cold. He is snow-cold, and Anaire is dying, and death in a world of ice is not a conscious passing. It is sleep-laden loss; a silent end. “I’ll wake Fingon.”

“It isn’t fever,” Maedhros mutters. He lifts that thin, battered hand, which must be precious and accursed to him at once, and beckons. “Touch my brow, if you must. It’s cool.”

Fingolfin reaches awkwardly out and does just that. Maedhros is right. Maedhros’ own hand is at his side again.

“Then what can I do?” he asks. “To set you at ease?”

“I am at ease,” Maedhros says, and shuts his eyes in what seems like a mockery of rest. 


	4. Chapter 4

The answer to Fingolfin’s initial curiosity is humbling. _Why_ , he had wondered, did Maedhros desire his presence when Fingon and Gwindor, not to mention Celegorm, were all as eager to stay with him? Then, when Maedhros revealed his waking nightmares, Fingolfin again was stricken with uncertainty. Why would Maedhros want the specter of his beloved Grandfather to sit beside him, while the vivid brutality of his murder rose readily in the mind’s eye?

The answer follows that. The answer, simply put, is that Fingolfin is lesser: in this instance, the lesser of many evils. If Maedhros cannot help but imagine Melkor Bauglir, looming over and enjoying the spectacle ( _It gives him pleasure_ , he said, and Fingolfin will not soon forget it), if he cannot help but imagine Finwe’s death in Fingolfin, what does he see when Fingon is near?

(Maedhros saw his father die.)

The night is fairly quiet, all told. Gwindor enters after midnight, sees that Maedhros is dozing, and stretches out beneath the window with his good arm under his head. Fingolfin himself sleeps, not deeply, and is woken only by a sharp intake of breath in the last hour before dawn. Maedhros’ face is skeletal with agony, bones pushing against skin as if they wish to escape their prison.

Fingolfin cannot know where it hurts, so he lays his hands on Maedhros’ upper arms, where there are no fresh wounds. That stills him. That stills the boy.

“Maedhros, what is it?”

“ _Fucking_ —nails—” Two savage blinks, eyes spasming open and shut, and then his head must clear enough for him to see where he is, and to whom he speaks. “A dream,” he whispers, as if Fingolfin cannot feel the maimed right arm shaking in his grasp. A river is roaring in that arm, beneath the skin, around the bones. No escape.

Fingolfin knows why the hand was lost. Knows what was…hammered to it.

_Nails._

Gwindor sits up, groggy. Crawls to the edge of the bed. Knocks Fingolfin’s hand aside gently, from the left arm.

“They’re not here, Red,” he says, leaning close to Maedhros’ ear, but not touching him. “None of ‘em. Not a one.”

Maedhros nods, once, and shuts his eyes again.

 _He is with me, always_.

Fingolfin scarcely remembers what Melkor Bauglir looks like, outside of newspaper print.

He and Gwindor are both awake, but not speaking, when Fingon comes, carrying a pan of fragrant herbs swimming in steaming water.

Maedhros was sleeping—thus the silence—but when Fingon steps through the door he opens his eyes and lifts his shoulders a little, before settling back.

“There are two healers here,” Fingon announces, more cheerful for having slept. He looks well. His hair is neat. His face shining. It takes so much to crush Fingon, and even though Fingolfin knows this road has not been easy for him, he spares himself a little hope. Fingon continues, “Tabitha, sister of that lawyer fellow—”

“Phillips,” Maedhros says. “Yes, I know Phillips.”

“Tabitha Phillips, then, and Miles Red Cloud. Miles showed me this concoction. He and Wachiwi speak the same language, Father. I’ll make a poultice for your ribs now, Maitimo. Forgive my hurry, but I can’t let the water cool too much.”

Not so much as a pause for breath or a general greeting from Fingon, when he has his sights set. Fingolfin does not mind.

Gwindor smiles at him. _Proud of your boy_. Fingolfin is shy of the weight of that—not of having a son, of living and dying for him, but of the happiness that might exist in spare moments, when Fingolfin no longer deserves it.

Not after Argon. And, in so many ways, at Ulmo’s Bridge and beyond, Fingon died, too.

He lowers his gaze and considers his worn trousers. Aredhel was never a seamstress at home, but both she and Artani—Galadriel help with mending, because such work is shared among their company. Turgon and Fingon have neater stitches than the girls. Looking at the even lines, Fingolfin feels certain that this was Turgon’s hand.

“This might sting,” Fingon is saying, drawing back the bedsheet and the shirt that has been tucked over Maedhros’ chest and shoulders. Caranthir searched eagerly for clothing that would fit him, but it is too soon, really, to even think of maneuvering around the bruised torso, the amputated limb.

“A stinging nettle will do nothing more than wake me, _cano_ ,” Maedhros answers, and Fingolfin is so charmed readily charmed by the tender childhood epithet that, hoping again, he hazards a swift glance at Maedhros’ upturned face.

What he sees there discomfits him. He expected affection for Fingon, and indeed there are traces of it on Maedhros’ faintly smiling lips, but from Fingolfin’s vantage point, the crook of Maedhros’ right elbow is visible, dug deep into the mattress. The position must pain his tormented forearm, and strain his battered ribs.

Maybe he wants the pain.

Fingolfin looks at Gwindor, pleading, but the man is focused on his friend once more. Just as Fingon is. Just as, in truth, Fingolfin is. And yet, they all see different things—Maedhros shows them different things, as much as is in his power to do so.

In daylight, the bruises, the scabbing lacerations, the detailed letters, are all horribly colored. There is fading yellow where blood is dissipating; ugly black-purple where it is still pooled. Fingon, with a grimace of apology, probes lightly with his fingers beneath Maedhros’ sternum, beneath the skinless oval of burned flesh that is centered, eerily, under the _o_ in the middle of his father’s name.

Fingolfin is searching for meaning in the wounds, yes, but he can’t find it.

“I’m sorry,” Fingon says. “Now that the swelling has receded, I am trying to ascertain the location of your ribs, your lungs.”

Maedhros doesn’t speak, because of the pain, but he also makes no sound at all, despite the pain.

“Lad,” says Gwindor, sympathetically, “Lad, tell him if you can’t bear it.”

“I can.” Maedhros’ jaw scarcely moves around the words.

“There, I’ll lay the poultice now,” Fingon says breathlessly. “And the—the cuts are scabbing over. You’re not bleeding, not that I can see, at least. I’m afraid there may still be internal injuries. I’ll change the bed linens in a moment, and if there are traces of blood in your urine—”

“Can’t even let him piss himself in peace,” Celegorm growls, shutting the door quietly behind himself and his dog. The slam, the crash—those are in his voice. “Ahoy, Maitimo. Smooth sailing in the night?”

Maedhros’ right elbow relaxes. “Pissed myself in peace, thank you kindly.”

Fingon turns his back on Celegorm, but Fingolfin can see the telltale signs of his irritation. Thousands of miles did not temper Fingon’s impatience with respect to this cousin. Something must be done.

“Perhaps Celegorm can help you with the linens,” Fingolfin suggests, unsure if this is an attempt at true peacemaking or an impish act of possession by Feanor, from beyond the grave. Regardless, it is difficult to lift Maedhros, when he is conscious, even for a short time.

Fingon opens his mouth to protest, but Celegorm only shrugs. “Now?”

“Not _yet_ ,” Fingon snaps. “I’m not finished with the hot poultice.”

Gwindor sighs. Maedhros’ eyes go half-lidded; his arms and shoulders limp. His massacred chest rises and falls, _Feanorian, Feanorian_. Fingon has not drawn the sheet low enough to reveal the other word.

Celegorm says something to Huan, which, though scarcely intelligible, manages to be very vulgar. Fingolfin was never one to reprimand his brother’s children—except for the one who lies broken. He does not now admonish Celegorm.

“Maitimo…” Fingon murmurs, righting his own ship, but Maedhros, as Fingolfin has lately discovered, is a body of dark waters.

“When you call me that,” Maedhros says, “You sound like him.”

Dead silence. Not a sigh, from Gwindor. Something else. Fingolfin would be lost, as to his nephew’s meaning, were not the very flatness of Maedhros’ voice an echo from the night before.

Celegorm’s frown is perplexed; Fingon shows confusion also, though with hurt flashing up his square-cut face. Fingon’s bones are the only thing that make him a man, with a look like that in his eyes.

Fingolfin—

 _It gives him pleasure._ Fingolfin hates what he knows already, hates that he discovers now the hold Bauglir’s voice has on innocent Fingon’s. He lurches to his feet. Ungraceful. No craftsman.

_A father._

“Fingon—” he says, but that is all he has. He cannot betray Maedhros’s confidence. He has his son’s name in his mouth and heart, a precious currency that cannot be spent and used as gold can. _All he has_.

Fingon does not look at his father. The scrape of the chair; the movement of a body—he did not even turn his head.

When perplexed, Fingon’s focus is minute. Pointed. He does not waver. Fingolfin is dimly conscious of a new idea: that loyalty can itself betray.

“I’m sorry,” Fingon says—is saying again—“I didn’t mean to remind you of…him. I didn’t know he called you that.”

Hurt? Is the hurt fading from his son’s face? What will replace it?

(Fingon cannot have guessed that, for Maedhros, his enemy is _here_.)

(Whose voice does Fingon think own resembles?)

Against the far wall, Celegorm stoops forward a little, a vulture hovering over something that is dying rather than dead. But that resemblance is all in his shoulders, his folded arms. Fingolfin, watching _his_ face, can see that he is lost, unmoored from family language.

As for Fingon—the words are right. The sincerity is wrong.

“Of course, now that you are here again, the name sounds different,” Fingon murmurs, smiling shyly, winding a stray bandage around his hand. Viciously apt, but that is all the more reason for Fingon not to say such things. “I didn’t want to talk of him, until you were…until you were ready. Not now—I don’t mean now. You have to rest.”

Fingolfin’s heart is starting and stopping. Loyalty, a weapon.

But there is not yet a way to be sure. It is for Maedhros to ask, and Maedhros is hardly breathing.

Fingolfin is sick with the longing ache to _make things right_.

Fingon, looking to all the rest of the world like Fingon, and to Maedhros, like _something else_ , covers his cousin’s chest again. He layers the old shirt over the fresh poultice with fingers that do not tremble. Fingolfin can smell the herbs now. Gwindor has one hand over his mouth, finger and thumb running down the grooves between lip and cheek.

Celegorm, Gwindor, Fingolfin. They would all be silent, given this chance. They do not want to know the past and present demons, not all at once, not even Fingolfin, who has asked a question here, a question there.

But Fingon is Fingon is Fingon. The minute focus. The eye _and_ the needle.

“Maedhros,” Fingon says, hesitantly. “Is it better if I call you, _Maedhros_?” He clears his throat. He lowers his voice. They are all still here; they can hear him, Fingon _knows_ they can hear him, but Fingolfin knows his son better than he knows gold or empty promises, and he can tell that Fingon is trying to be brave. “I know your father called you that, too.”

There is nothing to read in Maedhros’ profile, because nothing changes, not in his face, not in the lines of his swaddled chest, not in the uneven lay of his motionless legs beneath the blanket.

Fingon believes that Feanor is who Maedhros hears and sees. But Fingolfin knows the Maedhros who sees Feanor; knows what he says, what he asks, and he is nothing like…this.

This Maedhros isn’t going to say anything.

Fingolfin sits down again. Fingon follow the movement this time with a glance, a turn of his head. His cheeks are flushed.

Celegorm steps forward. The vulture of Fingolfin’s recent observation—but the comparison is far from just. Violence and death rest on all of them; it was Fingon who cut off Maedhros’ right hand.

“The linens,” Celegorm says gruffly. He is not like his father, could never be mistaken for his father. Not in appearance, not in manner. His voice is deeper, already, than Feanor’s was. “It’s time?”

Fingon nods, wordlessly. Fingolfin can only see one of Maedhros’ eyes, open wide enough to seem lidless, fixed on the ceiling. Save for Fingon’s direction, no one speaks as they lift Maedhros, supporting him at shoulder and hip. With one hand, Fingon removes the soiled linen—barely soiled, as Maedhros had consumed nothing but broth and tea. Fingon expects to introduce more substantial food within a few days; he told Fingolfin so last night.

Celegorm stays crouched beside the bed when Fingon’s ministrations are complete. His dog sidles up next to him, noses his shoulder with almost human sympathy in his liquid, bristle-browed eyes. Fingolfin was there when Celegorm broke at the sight of his brother; Celegorm does not appear to be breaking, now, but he and Maedhros share an ability to mask what they feel.

That ability did not belong to Maedhros, once.

It must be recently come to Celegorm.

“Fingon,” Maedhros murmurs, after a moment, his eyes unwavering from their blank upward gaze.

Fingon pauses in cleaning his hands. “What is it?”

He does not call Maedhros by any name.

“Might I have a little water…please?”

Gwindor tucks his hands in the pockets of his borrowed trousers, chin dipped to his chest. He doesn’t come close, like Celegorm and Huan. Fingolfin and he hang back, and it occurs to Fingolfin again that he does not know how old Gwindor is. Suffering is its own age. Still, Gwindor is fiercely protective of Maedhros—it is only that Fingolfin is unsure whether that affection is a more brother’s or a father’s.

Did Maedhros speak of his family—there? In sickness and health, theirs were the names on his tongue, in the old life. The City. But names are…names are dangerous. Old lives are old wounds.

Melkor Bauglir knew to call him _Maitimo_.

How?

“Of course,” Fingon is saying, filling the small tin cup. He must edge around Celegorm and Huan both to reach Maedhros, and his practiced doctor’s arm slips behind Maedhros’ shoulders again. Caring for an invalid on bedrest requires one to shift their body more than might be expected. It is a matter of course for Fingon, but Fingolfin expects that it is torment for Maedhros, who still has his body to learn. Of course, with scars like his…

Since he lives, he has been looked after. It is horrid to imagine what comfort could follow such hurts. Was that Bauglir, also? Did Bauglir mend what he tortured?

_You sound like him._

Maedhros laps at the water, the elbow crooked and tense again. With a clean cloth, Fingon dabs away the droplets from his lips and puts the cup aside. Maedhros closes his eyes before he murmurs,

“Thank you.”

Gwindor clears his throat. Looks at Fingolfin hard, like he’s angry. More of a dog’s ferocity in him than in Huan. Gwindor says, “I’ll return,” and stands waiting with one hand on the latch.

Maedhros does not open his eyes.

Celegorm watches Gwindor go. Turns his head and stares down Fingolfin. No anger. Something colder. Fingon takes up his chair and opens a battered, water-rippled journal to make a few notes.

Huan whines.

When the door opens again, it is not Gwindor. It is Curufin.

He does not announce himself, but Maedhros meets his gaze, alert at the sound of a door opening. Fingon puts aside his journal, ill-pleased to see another critical Feanorian.

“Hello, Maedhros,” Curufin says. He is—is he still sixteen? Feanor was like a god at sixteen, already as skilled with metalwork as men three times his age. Feanor at sixteen was brilliant and cruel, no longer plagued by the occasional fits of tearful rage that had frightened Fingolfin in childhood.

The rage and the brilliance are here, but Feanor isn’t.

If anyone looked for Fingolfin in Fingon, after all, they would find something else. Something better.

He is not fit to be a judge of Curufin; to be a judge of Feanor, really, since he does not truly expect to know Curufin better than he knew Curufin’s father. Fingolfin accepts in that instant that his brother is not here in a son’s body, even if he has not yet fully accepted that his brother is gone.

Curufin does not greet them. He has greeted Maedhros. He is waiting for Maedhros.

Maedhros, who quite lately seemed on the edge of ice and oblivion, gently speaks his brother’s name.

Curufin folds his arms and unfolds them. Steps forward, forward again. Nods to Celegorm.

“I assumed,” he says, “That you would want to know the status of our security, here.”

“Anything you would like to tell me,” Maedhros answers, “I’ll hear gladly.”

Curufin does what no one else has yet; he sits on the end of the bed carelessly, crossing one leg over the other. To Fingolfin’s surprise, Fingon confines his displeasure at this to a low cough. “The wall Athair began could be finished within a month’s time, but we have not devoted much attention to it since attacks largely ceased in your absence.” A pause. Again, he is waiting for something, but Fingolfin has no chance to learn what it is, before Curufin continues, “I have kept the forge very busy. There are weapons enough for all our men, and the outer mines are reinforced.” He smiles, then. “Celegorm is our designated hunter. Anyone who wishes to join him must follow his lead, or risk a foot or a leg. Isn’t that right, Celegorm?”

Celegorm shrugs. Fingolfin expected him to follow this new, brotherly meeting with interest, but his hunter’s mind seems elsewhere. Curufin talks on, often in a manner that veils his subject, oftener than that in barbs that seem directed, strangely enough, at Maedhros.

“We have little intelligence here,” Curufin explains, not quite apologizing for his lack of knowledge on something called _orcs_. “So many are afraid to depart, given the general health of the departed.”

Celegorm rises, clucks for his dog. “So long,” he says, to his brothers. “I’m starved.”

Curufin juts his chin in a nod of acknowledgement, then continues. “I’ve learned more of this land than the world outside. But you understand _that_ , of course. Our first need is to know what we defend. At least, until we have opportunity to learn of what we fight.” He sounds most like Feanor when he says that, and Fingolfin thinks that Maedhros hears it, too.

Maedhros looks so tired. So tired, and strained with the effort to appear eager, attentive. He used to follow Feanor’s every word. Fingolfin knew his infant expressions, because Maedhros was the first babe in the family whom he’d been old enough to know at all. Painfully conscious of his lowly status as half-uncle, he had stood apart, observing the wondering, wandering eyes of the boy.

Eyes fixed on Feanor. Eyes fixed on Curufin.

Fingolfin has now been a father for a long time, and all it has done, some days, is teach him inadequacy. But the lesson that follows inadequacy, the _answer_ , if you will, is that the failure of the self does not matter in the face of duty.

“You must want sleep,” Curufin says, a little breathless. “Sleep on all I’ve said, perhaps, and wake to find some of it useful.” He has his father’s commanding tongue, certainly, but not yet his stamina for oration. He rises, and is a little dizzy as he does so. Fingolfin almost believes that horror crosses Curufin’s face before he makes for the door.

Fingon follows him, and bars it behind him. Maedhros’ breath is like one of Huan’s whines. Fingolfin shakes his head, and Fingon, awkward, returns to withdraw the bolt.

“I…” He tugs at one threaded braid. “I didn’t think of that.”

“No matter,” Maedhros whispers. “You shouldn’t.”

“But—” Fingon’s face screws up. Not horror; grief. Different desires, in different sons. “I _wish_ I understood.”

Maedhros’ neck twists. His face towards Fingolfin. Imploring?

“Never mind,” Fingolfin says. “It’s past noon. Fingon, you ought to go and have your dinner. Ask Finrod what he has been about—I have scarcely seen him.”

“I’m really not hungry,” Fingon mutters, but he must be sufficiently satisfied by the temporary absence of meddlesome Feanorians, because he departs.

“You can’t tell him,” Maedhros says, when Fingon is gone. The words are clearer, now, than they have been all morning. “You can’t tell Fingon, the things I tell you.”


	5. Chapter 5

Upon a time, requests for Fingon’s protection ran the opposite way. Fingolfin, staring down a fop-masked youth, wanting to believe him, had doubted that his words would have effect—or that they would be tested outside the sphere of social reputation.

He had known so little of the world.

“What is it,” Fingolfin asks, nearly four years and many deaths later, “that you want to tell me?”

Maedhros raises his hand deliberately, pointing with a broken-nailed forefinger. His remaining nails are badly split and loosened. Fingon says they will soon fall out altogether. “The door. Would you lock it?”

“But—”

An impatient, or at least restless, twitch about his mouth, and—“Please.”

Fingolfin rises, plods forward, and bolts the door. Then he retakes his seat.

“Maedhros,” he says, almost pleading himself. Whatever Maedhros is about to say must be dire; already, despite his request, his strained eyes flit nervously to the bolt slid fast. Memories of a cell, no doubt. But that, too, is an assumption—Fingolfin knows very little about where he was kept, or for how long, when he was Bauglir’s prisoner.

“Please.” Again, that word. How often… “I haven’t much strength to say it all. To tell you everything I should. But I—” He stops.

“All the time you need is yours,” Fingolfin assures him. “But do not vex yourself.”

A wretched smile breaks over Maedhros’ face. “There it is,” he murmurs. “All the goodness I could ask for, to damn me further. Uncle…if you would, remember your hatred. It will serve you better, here.”

“Hatred? For you?”

“You would call it hatred for the things I did. Hatred for the division I fostered, between you and—and Fingon.”

Fingolfin leans forward, his clasped hands between his knees. This way, he can tighten his grip to ease his tension, rather than permitting it to gather in his voice. “If you are thinking of…the City, I was worried for you.”

“You were not allowed to worry for me,” Maedhros answers, still smiling. “And I commend you for being always the man of honor. You stayed within your role, as often as I tried—and failed—to escape mine. But my failures had consequences.”

Fingolfin shakes his head. “I cannot hear in silence any attempt to justify—those wounds.”

One of Maedhros’s eyebrows shifts up. An expression he has kept, then, despite the lingering stiffness of his bruises. “You do not like that I have written in me what could once be washed away and hidden?”

“You were indiscreet. Not wicked.”

“I was indiscreet when I drank myself down to the gutter, you mean. I was indiscreet when I had a hand—nay, _two_ hands—in ruining daughters of your circle.”

Finwe loved this boy best of all his grandchildren. Finwe was often too preoccupied to sit beside sickbeds, but whenever he did, he offered kind and spirited diversion. Fingolfin cannot call on those recollections to guide him, however; there is too much pain, and he has none of his father’s distracting charm. 

“When we heard that you were dead,” Fingolfin says, thereby refusing to remain in this hollow, aching past, “We grieved. It broke my heart to think of you gone. To think of—”

“You grieved because you are good,” Maedhros parries. “But _you_ would have left me dead. And you would have been right to, Uncle. I can’t be any use to you here, don’t you see? And worse, I…I shall do harm. Real harm. You and Finrod have a world before you, but it is a dangerous world. It needs your undivided notice, if you are to survive in it. And…” The smile, which has hung from his lips like a fragment of torn flesh, cannot keep its shape around the next name. “And Fingon, he’s in the most danger of all. You were _right_ , when you were angry, then. What have I done but caused him harm? What have I done but—but be all that they punished me for?”

Fingolfin heard the rumors, coming west. Fingolfin saw the destruction at Ulmo’s Bridge; the fresh graves.

He does not have his father’s charms, but he finds he has more than a trace of his father’s stubborn loyalty. Family above all. Finwe and Feanor interpreted the mandate differently, to their pain—to Feanor’s death—but the power of it, the power of wanting to believe those whom you love to be more important than those whom you scarcely know, is no small thing.

The chasm between sin and forgiveness, readily closed and crossed—if he can only forget that there were other sons and other brothers.

Other Fingons, perhaps. Felled by Maedhros’ bullets.

“Yes, it was done viciously,” Maedhros says, quiet but stronger than before. Urging Fingolfin onwards. “Believe me, I know the sear of every brand. The cut of every whip. They—they ruined my body. You know that. Fingon knows it, even as he tries to mend it. A scrap of linen for butchered meat. A poultice for my father’s name.”

Fingolfin finds that he has no reply to make, to this. He must do what Maedhros has begged of him: listen.

It is torture of a different sort.

“What good can such things do? I am mad.” Maedhros has turned his face to the side, so that his eyes can fix on Fingolfin’s. Fingolfin is the one whose gaze is weak, slipping. “Whatever Fingon heals, it will not be Maedhros Feanorian who returns to you, no matter the promises of marred flesh.”

“This is just the sort of lie that a frightened boy would tell me,” Fingolfin says gravely.

“A frightened boy killed innocents, then. A frightened boy put Fingon’s life at risk. A frightened boy—tell me, would my aunt and cousin still live were it not for my lies?”

Fingolfin has two hands, yet. With them, he covers his face.

 _Damn him,_ said his gentle wife. His wife, warmed all those years by his arms. Buried by his arms, when winter took her as it would take any other frail, summer creature.

_Damn him, for what he has done to you._

But Anaire was kinder than her fears.

Fingolfin drags the tips of his fingers over his eyelids. Then he returns his hands to his lap.

“You want me to be angry,” he says, choosing each word with the same care as he would choose stones for the foundation of a house. A stronghold. “So that I will be cruel to you. And then what, Maedhros? Shall I try and order Fingon not to doctor you? Or shall I turn you outside the walls of this fort—over the objections of everyone in it? Against the objections of my own heart?”

Maedhros’ gaze breaks at last. His awful, persuasive composure breaks, too. His face, which has clung so desperately to the hallowed grounds of its former beauty, is made ugly, suddenly, by the spasm of a sob.

Fingolfin wishes above anything that he could take him in his arms. He has held awkward bodies, living and dead, closer than comfort—for that is sometimes what love requires. But he remembers the lines of this body, when hands have reached to help it, and he remembers that Gwindor, who knew this Maedhros better, pushed the helping hand aside.

For now, then, love requires staying, and keeping still.

Maedhros cries himself out. Fingolfin’s own cheeks are wet with tears. Finally, when he can bear it no longer, he moves from the chair to his knees at the bedside, diminishing the distance between them a little.

He rests his elbows on the edge of the bed, his hands beneath his chin, now. An old attitude of prayer.

“Maedhros,” he murmurs. “I will not hate you. What then?”

Feanor is buried in the field that spills south of Mithrim’s guarded hills. Fingolfin learned of it from Caranthir, who told Maedhros on the morning of his first visit. Caranthir spoke bluntly, more like Nerdanel and her kin than any of the Finwean line, though he never spoke of his mother. Bluntly spoken, therefore, was the revelation that

_We buried him in the lower field, good deal of sun there, Maitimo, thought it best—_

It had not seemed to hurt Maedhros as much, in that moment, as one might have expected. 

It hurt Fingolfin.

The earth here is dry. The grass is matted, but not yet dead beneath its bleached uppermost layer. Frost and snow have barely visited Mithrim, and that, Fingolfin supposes, is to be expected. December is a gentle month in California territory. How many times must Fingolfin remind himself of this, comparing it to the barren plains a thousand miles behind?

As he walks, the lay of the ground descends before him, sloping under his feet. Ribbons of cloud festoon the sky, fit to be tangled in the reaching trees. Phillips and his sister, familiar to him because Finrod and Fingon have mentioned them favorably, are patrolling the far reaches of the land. Still, Fingolfin is granted privacy. No Feanorian trails his heels, mistrusting him.

_What then?_

_I do not know,_ Maedhros whispered, voice and resolve both frayed. _Damn me, I do not know._

 _I will tell you,_ Fingolfin said, and it was hard—hard not to draw on memories of Feanor, of how Feanor would have brought his son to admiration and obedience, by word and voice alone. He could not speak as Feanor, not ever again.

Obedience above all. Anything, _above all_ , was not the same as love and mercy.

Or even justice, come to that.

_I will tell you. We will unbar the door, so as not to further distress you. I will say nothing of this to Fingon; there is nothing that he needs to hear. And Maedhros, if one of us hurts you, by inadvertent similarity—you have only to say the word._

In summer, when they buried Feanor, the meadow must have quivered golden and green with life. In winter, Fingolfin reflects on how his brother might have looked in death. Peaceful? Frightened? Or merely drained of the essence that shone in his eyes and even his skin, the brightness that made him what he was?

 _I_ knew _it was all a dream. I knew…oh,_ God. _Athair…I knew they couldn’t. Not you, Athair. They couldn’t do that to_ you.

Maedhros could well imagine Feanor in death.

Fingolfin shades his eyes from the slanting glare of the sun, already falling. He does not know what good it will do him, to look on Feanor’s resting place. Then again, he does not know what good it did Maedhros, to be told that he was not hated.

Fingolfin must have faith, for these. For these, and so much more.

_…say the word._

Maedhros was quiet. Then he said, with a child’s smallness,

_As you wish, Uncle._

The grave is covered with stones. They are of different size and shape, but laid neatly. Tended-to. Not doubt this is the handiwork of Curufin’s devotion to this place, to its eternal occupant. Feanor died violently, but his sons loved him enough to lay him down in a place quite far from bloodshed. This is no potter’s field. This is Mithrim’s true garden; its unbound reach of hope. From the south comes the sun.

Fingolfin crouches, conscious of how clumsy he is, in grieving and rejoicing, in leading and letting go.

“Hello, brother,” he says. “All our lives I have wanted to call you that, but you…did not love the title on my lips. Do not be afraid—”

As if Feanor could be afraid! But he was. He _was_. Fingolfin must remember that.

“Do not be afraid that I am here to crow over the past. Nothing could be further from my heart.”

No answer from the stones. Only a madman would expect one. But Feanor has never let anyone else have the last of an exchange, and Fingolfin fancies he expresses his displeasure in the sigh of the wind.

“I came here to be angry. I asked Fingon to hold me back, if I should try to do you harm. In truth, I feared my own forgiveness. I feared that despite everything, a word from you would make me want harmony, as if such a thing were ever possible between us.”

In that way, Feanor did have the last of the exchange. His death was never what Fingolfin feared, only because he could not countenance it.

“It no longer matters what we were,” he says, clearing his throat. He is hearing the sound of Feanor’s son, weeping, ringing in his ears. Maedhros has not told him much, but for the black grief in his mind and soul. Maedhros has not told him why Bauglir ordered _Feanorian_ to be cut in blood.

“It matters,” Fingolfin says, to the silent grave, “What they are, and what they will become. Our sons. I do not know what you would have done for Maedhros. I only know what I shall do—for him and for his brothers, and for my sons whom you would never have learned to love. I shall not be parted from them, save by my own life. Even if one or the other of us leaves this place, that bond shall not be broken.” He pauses, overcome by a lifetime’s shyness in the face of this other life’s scorn. “I do not know if that is what is you would have wanted. But you are gone, Feanor, and they are still so young.”

No poetry, from scorned Fingolfin. No defiance. His thoughts have dried up; he should return to the fort.

He offers a prayer for the dead.

He did not tell Maedhros where he was going, nor Fingon. He left Fingon and Estrela in the sickroom, the two having come in together after the door was unbarred, and resolved to bid his farewell.

Did it satisfy him?

It is all wrong.

And there—there, another memory—something Maedhros said to Fingolfin, when fever gifted him unbearable relief and raw honesty:

 _It was all wrong—_ how _—but he had your ring. It was so_ like _your ring, and he—he touched me with it…oh, to forget—_ please _—_

Fingolfin feels a chill at the recollection of those words that has nothing to do with the wind. In Maedhros’ ramblings, and in his recent revelations, _he_ has been Bauglir.

_He had your ring._

“Father?”

Fingolfin has come to the low wall that snakes, unfinished, around Mithrim proper: the fort, the stable, the garden and smithy. Turgon is there, a broken bit of shingle in his hands. A bit of shingle and a stub of charcoal, too, Fingolfin realizes. He is drawing.

“Turgon, good day to you.” He wants very much to fling his arms around this square-shouldered, grim-eyed child, who became a man when no one was watching. Turgon is bitter in his loyalties; clear in his judgment. Fingolfin sees himself in his son’s eyes and knows that he is insufficient, though Turgon loves him too much to say so. 

“I am going to build up this wall,” Turgon says. “Curufin has all but forgotten about it, though he assures me that he manages a complete defense in invisible and enigmatic ways.”

Fingolfin peers at the charcoal notes; they are figures, dimensions. “You did speak to Curufin, then?”

Turgon squints at him. Almost a smile. “Father, you can’t avoid Curufin if you poke around his precious Mithrim. I was surprised it took so much time for him to find me.” He shrugged. “At least he seems disinclined to meddle, yet. I reckon that we’re better off behind another wall, if we can build it before there’s an army on our doorstep.”

 _An army_. Fingolfin has not forgotten—will never forget—the skirmish and chase that framed poor Argon’s death, but he has yet to wholly envision, what a war would be in this land. They drew first blood, at the railroad…or at least, they thought they had.

The former slaves would tell a different story.

Maedhros….

“This is good,” he says, clapping a hand on one of those square shoulders. “I shall ask Finrod to recruit what aid he can. Caranthir may be amenable as well.”

“Caranthir? He’s practically a child.”

“Older than Curufin.”

Turgon sniffs. “I suppose so. And I suppose there are no children here.”

Fingolfin does not correct him. Turgon is young, and already scarred at heart. It is not his burden to bear, as it is Fingolfin’s, seeing them all as children, here.

He walks the length of the wall with his son. He listens more than he speaks.

He does not ask himself what the dead would have done. 


End file.
